“Oh! what a peril for our father!”

“Never, he told me, had he run such imminent danger for he saw the artilleryman apply the match, and the gun go off—­but, at the very nick, a man of tall stature, dressed as a peasant, and whom he had not before remarked, threw himself in front of the cannon.”

“Unfortunate creature! what a horrible death!”

“Yes,” said Dagobert, thoughtfully; “it should have been so.  He ought by rights to have been blown into a thousand pieces.  But no—­nothing of the kind!”

“What do you tell us?”

“What the general told me.  ‘At the moment when the gun went off,’ as he often repeated to me, ’I shut my eyes by an involuntary movement, that I might not see the mutilated body of the poor wretch who had sacrificed himself in my place.  When I again opened them, the first thing I saw in the midst of the smoke, was the tall figure of this man, standing erect and calm on the same spot, and casting a sad mild look on the artilleryman, who, with one knee on the ground, and his body thrown backward, gazed on him in as much terror as if he had been the devil.  Afterwards, I lost sight of this man in the tumult,’ added your father.”

“Bless me Dagobert! how can this be possible?”

“That is just what I said to the general.  He answered me that he had never been able to explain to himself this event, which seemed as incredible as it was true.  Moreover, your father must have been greatly struck with the countenance of this man, who appeared, he said, about thirty years of age—­for he remarked, that his extremely black eyebrows were joined together, and formed, as it were, one line from temple to temple, so that he seemed to have a black streak across his forehead.  Remember this, my children; you will soon see why.”

“Oh, Dagobert! we shall not forget it,” said the orphans, growing more and more astonished as he proceeded.

“Is it not strange—­this man with a black seam on his forehead?”

“Well, you shall hear.  The general had, as I told you, been left for dead at Waterloo.  During the night which he passed on the field of battle, in a sort of delirium brought on by the fever of his wounds, he saw, or fancied he saw, this same man bending over him, with a look of great mildness and deep melancholy, stanching his wounds, and using every effort to revive him.  But as your father, whose senses were still wandering, repulsed his kindness saying, that after such a defeat, it only remained to die—­it appeared as if this man replied to him; ’You must live for Eva!’ meaning your mother, whom the general had left at Warsaw, to join the Emperor, and make this campaign of France.”

“How strange, Dagobert!—­And since then, did our father never see this man?”

“Yes, he saw him—­for it was he who brought news of the general to your poor mother.”

“When was that?  We never heard of it.”

“You remember that, on the day your mother died, you went to the pine forest with old Fedora?”